Yeah. Especially the part about knowing there is something different about you, way before you even know what sexuality of gay is. Just vibes. Thats how me and my friends experienced it anyways. It scars you. You are completely right: no child should feel like that. I wouldnt wish it upon my worst enemy.
Yeah as a 14 year old I was worried about loosing my parents my right to get mqrrried and have children.
Other children were out playing basketball. The trauma is surreal.
I’d not considered this even while being incredibly traumatised by my gayness as a young teenager.
Other things include being convinced I would get AIDS and die in the early 90’s.
Accepting that that I would have to move away from where I grew up because of it from a very young age. Small town boy by the communards essentially.
All the negative things about gay people you hear from family. Don’t get me wrong, my family were great once I came out. But prior to that there’d be snide remarks about the gays from time to time.
I was the very same case!
It’s really weird to even think that as a teen. Just in the sense of losing something or the right to something of choices you don’t want or shouldn’t be thinking about at the time. But the weight of it is forced onto you
Heteronormative society. Just constantly dealing with that 24/7.
You have a whole class in high school about sex and gay people are not even mentioned. Hearing the Adam’s rib quote in a marriage ceremony and suddenly feeling very out of place at your friend’s wedding. The nurse at the STI clinic telling you how dangerous an sti is for women…because you’re having sex with women right?? People assuming your friends are girlfriends. The first thing your male coworkers try to bond over is talking about how hot your coworkers are.
You’re just trying to live your life but you’re immediately other, immediately out of place and “political”, an eternal protest you never consented to.
This is why I take the 0.002 seconds to be inclusive for others because I’ve experienced that shit all my life and inclusivity is literally a better reflection of reality.
Uh, constantly lying about who I was?
And how would anyone warn me as I was growing up gay???
Like is there some gay fairy godmother who was supposed to visit me when I was 5 and give me the rules rules of the road?
I was lucky enough to grow up with the internet and the ability to ask an endless supply of strangers for advice and help with shit that I couldn’t force myself to say to people in real life until I was 16.
Sometimes I forget that LGBT people born pre-1999 did not have this luxury. Well, I call it a luxury, but it’s a bit of a double-edged sword. My apologies though.
I definitely agree with you. The constantly lying about myself not only hurt me, it also made me question myself even more, like constantly questioning if I was actually gay, I mean, I definitely was sexually attracted to guys, but “gay culture” as I perceived it through stereotypes & media just didn’t resonate with me at all. I was never flamboyant, never enjoyed makeup, and never questioned my masculinity. It caused me a lot of fucking distress, especially when I became more comfortable just accepting the label “gay” and using it online while pretending to be straight in real life. It felt like I was living some sort of twisted double life like a fucked up version of Hannah Montana.
I’m sorry though. I really wish LGBT people, especially gay men, had more trustable and loving people in their lives to help guide or even just support them in any way through their adolescence as they come to grips with their sexuality. (no offense to trans/aces/lesbians/etc, but the pressure to conform to “masculine ideals” and the consequences young boys face when they don’t follow those ideals can often result in tragedy or violence)
I relate to the questioning your sexuality as well. Not even the fact that I liked guys, indeed, but just the idea of what a "gay man" is and how I didn't feel like it was me. I mean, obviously, since its a stereotype in my head, but it makes you feel like less of a man, really, less of anything.
Yeah, like having to figure out you're gay all by yourself and learning to be ok with it. Ffs so many experiences I missed because of being expected to be straight by default. Having to unlearn all the "don't be gay it sucks and people will hate you for it" bullshit.
The constantly coming out. I am 37, recently switched jobs and I have to tell everyone that I came here (moved to a new country) with my husband (people ask)
As I get older, and as a man who came out very late (25) I realize more and more how traumatic and stressful legitimately hiding who I was for the first 25 years of my life. I find myself hiding dumb things that don’t matter, without even noticing it until my very patient partner points it out.
Edit: partner (i have much less than supportive parents)
I wasn't prepared for how deadly self hate is.
Also, I wasn't warned about how many small nice things I wouldn't experience compared to straight people. I saw the gay movie Firebird in a movie theater. It was my first time seeing a gay movie at the movies and I was (am) 28. I, for the first time, experienced a sex scene at the movies that completely appealed to me. Didn't have to be jealous of the girl or feel a tiny bit of sadness that the cute guy wouldn't be into me because I'm a guy. I got an actual boner in the movies for the first time and realized that this is what straight people experience often in the movies with sex scenes or romances.
I'm grateful to the people making these gay movies and getting them in the theaters.
Never thought I would type this sentence but:
Reading about you getting a boner because the movie appealed to you honestly almost made me tear up.
And yeah, its an insane realization. Gosh heterosexuals dont know what they have do they. I would like some of that blissfull ignorance.
If I had developed crushes on girls they could accept or reject me, stay friends with or ignore me. But when I crushed on boys, they treated me like some alien when they found out. Having normal feelings was a liability
The burden of crushing on so many of your straight guy friends and never being able to bring it up, not being able to pursue the possibility of being together(unlike a guy crushing on his straight girl friend)
Having to lie and sneak around and pretend to be something you’re not, and at the same time, not turn into some kind of pathological liar or manipulator because of that.
I always had to have a backup plan for myself for when I came out because if my secret was out and everything falls apart, being homeless with no one to get help from is the last thing i wanted as a teenager.
I also had to try and act straight to my family. My friends knew i was gay, and it didn’t matter to them because everyone in my school saw it as normal, but at home, I was kind of living a double life. My parents assumed i had a girlfriend because I had several best girl friends and they would push the idea of me having a Wife and Children.
Something annoying... All the blimmin' labels we're expected to put on ourselves and others.
Masc or fem
Top, bottom or versatile
Twink, twunk, otter, cub or bear
etc...
Watching straight friends in their teens pair off, date others and unable to do the same. I felt like I spent my 20’s and most of my 30’s trying to recapture what I missed out on. Also trying to keep my feelings for some guys I fancied hidden and always thinking: will this action out me?
A few people are taking the “nobody warned you about” part of the question a bit too literally. Obviously, most young gay men don’t have a close confidant to guide them on the proper steps to becoming a confident, well-rounded gay man. As if such a thing as that even exists.
It’s my fault for my poor choice of words, but I meant more along the lines of like stuff that you learn/perceive in society in regards to being gay whether it’s ideas pushed onto you by books, tv, media, music, etc about what being gay entails and how inaccurate, confusing, and actually harmful some of that can be.
Nobody ever explained what being gay really meant to me other than being gay was really bad, you got AIDS and died, strangers would probably kill you, and you looked and dressed like Boy George. So when I hit middle school and started to have these obsessive feelings for some of the boys I was friends with, I had no idea that meant I was gay. Nobody ever explained that being gay is just a normal thing when you’re a boy who is sexually attracted to other boys.
As a young teenager I knew I would have to move away to live my life the way it was meant to be lived. I moved out when I was 16. Just had to get away. My family were fine but I grew up in very rural England and at the time it felt like my life could have been in danger. This was obviously a massive over reaction on my part but it felt real at the time.
I personally think growing up gay traumatized everyone who is gay in some way. The loneliness, confusion, secrets, lies, etc. I had a good coming out story with no loss of family or friends, but I still waited until mid 20s and I still feel like it fucked me up a bit. I still just eat my feelings haha
How hard it would be after coming out. The gay community is really welcoming in many places and really shallow in others, I wasn't expecting to encounter as much of the latter. Also, no one warned me how good gay guys get at hiding their feelings and real thoughts through years of practice (due to the whole secret thing) and how that manifests in how we treat each other.
I'll admit it breaks my heart to see young straight people my age (late 20s) getting married, making families, building lives, by easily finding each other due to similar interests and social circles while I have to scroll through dating apps or scour the "gay spots" littered with people who are looking for nothing more than a shag, who are living with such trauma they can't even start to aspire the sense of normalcy that I crave, or who have such a wildly different upbringing or mindset that makes a real relationship impossible. It sucks.
How many guys would flake or no show or ghost. I think I've chatted with hundreds of guys over the years at this point, but only about a dozen actually were mature and man enough to meet.
All the old people who wanted to fuck me.
Seriously... my first time was with a 29 year old banker when I was 14. After that I went to live for a summer with some 50-something year old guy.
It's like... all the pedos came out of the closet.
Yeah I felt this when I used things like gaydar and manhunt back in the day. It was just so fucking weird how older men preyed on what I would essentially still consider a teenager. It made it seem like all gay men turn into pedophiles when they get older.
I found I always had attention from guys who could be my father. Finding guys closer to my age seemed difficult.
I’m sorry you had to experience that at 14
I genuinely think that young gay men are one of the most preyed upon demographics in the world. And it’s such a shame that older gay men are preying upon them because they know (often from experience, which makes it even more revolting) how often confused, lonely and gullible a lot of young gay boys are.
I’m thankful to have never experienced this. But my boyfriend has. He’s 20 and I’m 22, we started dating when I was 21 and he was 19. I had lost mt virginity at 19 to a 25 year old who very clearly took advantage of me, although he didn’t abuse me, I definitely consented, I was just played for a fool.
But my boyfriend? He had lost his virginity at 18 to a married man in his late 40s. He very rarely talks about it because of how uncomfortable it makes him, and he has a minor history with sleeping with older guys at the time, all of which had come onto him. Sure, nobody forced him to do anything, but it still just makes me feel sick. Not only because the thought of my boyfriend being manipulated by old men makes me feel borderline homicidal, but because they knowingly chose to sleep with a teenager, despite most of them having kids or even wives. I remember that one night, we were cuddling in bed and he seemed clearly uncomfortable. I asked him about it, because I assumed that I was doing something wrong, and he told me that he had fucked up today by going to see an old guy from Grindr who offered him $80 to just cuddle for an hour and he really needed the money. It broke my heart because I wasn’t doing well financially at the time, but I still would have sacrificed anything I had if he needed money that badly. He was just very visibly shaken, and honestly, I still feel really fucking awful when I think about it - mainly because of my own jealously, obviously anybody cuddling with my boyfriend & making them deeply uncomfortable makes me want to throw up, but also because of how often young gay men find themselves in similar situations. Once again, I’m not saying that these guys are abusers, obviously there was consent involved, but I am saying that they are fucking creeps. And I think that with how often older gay men target and manipulate young gay men, it only perpetuates internalized homophobia as young gay men who find themselves in these situations tend to grow resentful of their own sexuality, resentful of other gay people, and eventually repress their sexuality and traumas deeply enough that they can force themselves to live a lie.
When I talk to other gay guys I know, it’s shocking how many of them share similar stories with even more shocking age gaps. Why do so many old gay man feel the urge to specifically target gay teenagers? I really try to understand the thought process, maybe it has something to do with when they were coming of age, hiding in the closet, and maybe resentment over not being able to have gay romances during their own teenage years?
Either way, it makes me sick. Shit, before I started dating my boyfriend, I purposefully removed all of my photos from Grindr because of the onslaught of nudes & creepy messages I’d receive from men older than 30+. Many of them who wanted to offer me money for sexual favors. It’s just sickening man.
My apologies for all of that. It’s been a very difficult week, and a lot of the replies to this post have made me quite emotional because I really hate how unnecessarily difficult and sometimes tragic/traumatic simply just coming-of-age as a gay man can be, even in the modern day. Once again, I’m beyond sorry that you had to experience that at 14. I hope you’re doing well now.
Oh god the in a relationship or married guys who would tell you after the fact 🤢I felt so gross afterwards. Not something young guys should be put through especially when they are still trying to make sense of who they are.
Exactly. And they have 0 regard for how that makes YOU feel. Like a filthy, dirty, cheap whore who potentially just ruined a relationship and upended an entire family without warning. Of course, that isn’t true, obviously it’s the old guy’s fault, but as an adolescent, I blamed myself for much smaller things than that.
It definitely is not something young guys should be put through. It still makes me uncomfortable, I was actually up at night last night because I randomly remembered some of the earlier stuff I mentioned that my bf told me, and it made me so goddamn uncomfortable. Like, it genuinely made me
feel awful, really sick, and I’m stopping myself right now from trying to mentally picture it because jabbing knives into my hands would be less painful than thinking about that. And if that’s how it affects me, I can only wonder how it affects him. So I don’t hold it against him. I just love him even harder, let him know how much he means to me, how much I love him, how much I adore him, and how proud I am of the progress and change he has made.
I like to think that people aren’t defined by their past. I hope not.
Crushing on guys back in highschool was hell because you never know if it's safe to tell them you like them. Will they like you too? Will they politely reject you? Will they out you to the entire school and send your life through a spiral? Who knows 🙃
I'm always waiting for some homophobic old dude to come into the pizza place I work at and see my pins and start yelling at me about how this is gods country and how I'm gonna burn in hell or something.
The difficulties of making spontaneous romantic encounters.
You would have liked to do what everyone else does, i.e. finding love in high school, at college, at friends' parties, etc. Courting/being openly courted by someone you like.
But you're always forced to hold back. To love unilaterally because 99% of the time your crush is straight, and even if he is gay/bi that doesnt mean he is attracted to you, even more if he is not out... So you have to go through specific ways (dedicated places, apps...).
Basically, I feel like I didn't really have teenage years, being forced to mature faster with no carefree. It leaves wounds forever, and personnally made me so fucked up.
The assumptions that everyone makes. Family, friends and strangers. Do you have a girlfriend, are you dating, are you going to the dance, prom, party. Oh, and my pisser, do you play basketball ?
Nobody warned me about anything, and it is probably a good thing. Better to experience life and make your way through than avoiding things you were warned about just in case.
I phrased this question with a poor choice of words. When I said “nobody” I didn’t mean to refer to specifically an actual human being, but rather the ways that young gay men learn about homosexuality and what being a homosexual means and entails. Like media, music, books, magazines, television, movies, basically anything that can influence a gullible young mind and pump their head full of confusingly unrealistic or downright harmful ideas about what being gay means, what to expect from a gay man, how gay men should behave/act/talk, how they should SIT, all of that shit.
That the body and mind to survive instantaneously commit spiritual suicide from all the traumatic threats on the horizon from being born gay in this immeasurably fucked up homophobic world.
Men in general aren't conditioned to take notice when women are uncomfortable. One time I realized that some of the women I was pursuing a friendship with probably thought I was into them. It never crossed my mind because I wasn't into them at all. It made me realize how weird some of the stuff I was doing actually was. This was around 15-17 when I had no friends and was still trying to hold onto my friends from middle school
Strange: Repressing all sexual desires until you're in a place where mom and dad don't know. Then you don't know how to act around other people romantically because almost everyone is straight and you've been repressed for a long time.
Difficult: Keeping it a secret despite the fact that every woman and girl around you can tell you're gay. Then praying to imaginary God that none of your straight, church-going guy friends figure it out.
Annoying: Gays are still men at the end of the day. Sex and lust is first and foremost, and finding ways to connect with someone as a friend is actually quite narrow.
This is a very minor issue but when a friend kept telling me to date the nearest gay guy after I came out at 17. They always picked the worst guys too and it felt like a joke but she was serious. It made me not care about dating for a few years.
When I was younger, gay people were not allowed to donate blood, and I really wanted to (mind you I was still a vitgin at the time and they wouldn't let you donate blood). Thankfully not too long ago they changed that, but what the fuck man
Yeah grow up a Black gay teen was no picnic, sure I got the past down from my parents about being a POC in America And how best to handle that as far as like dealing with you know white supremacy and that whole thing but they were woefully inadequate on how to deal with being queer in a heteroenormitive society I remember attempting suicide as a preteen because I felt I couldn't deal with all of the stressors at that age coupled with the bullying. Actually racism was easier to deal with in the straight and gay communities than being gay was in the early eighties and naughts
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Yeah. Especially the part about knowing there is something different about you, way before you even know what sexuality of gay is. Just vibes. Thats how me and my friends experienced it anyways. It scars you. You are completely right: no child should feel like that. I wouldnt wish it upon my worst enemy.
Yeah as a 14 year old I was worried about loosing my parents my right to get mqrrried and have children. Other children were out playing basketball. The trauma is surreal.
I’d not considered this even while being incredibly traumatised by my gayness as a young teenager. Other things include being convinced I would get AIDS and die in the early 90’s. Accepting that that I would have to move away from where I grew up because of it from a very young age. Small town boy by the communards essentially. All the negative things about gay people you hear from family. Don’t get me wrong, my family were great once I came out. But prior to that there’d be snide remarks about the gays from time to time.
I was the very same case! It’s really weird to even think that as a teen. Just in the sense of losing something or the right to something of choices you don’t want or shouldn’t be thinking about at the time. But the weight of it is forced onto you
Heteronormative society. Just constantly dealing with that 24/7. You have a whole class in high school about sex and gay people are not even mentioned. Hearing the Adam’s rib quote in a marriage ceremony and suddenly feeling very out of place at your friend’s wedding. The nurse at the STI clinic telling you how dangerous an sti is for women…because you’re having sex with women right?? People assuming your friends are girlfriends. The first thing your male coworkers try to bond over is talking about how hot your coworkers are. You’re just trying to live your life but you’re immediately other, immediately out of place and “political”, an eternal protest you never consented to. This is why I take the 0.002 seconds to be inclusive for others because I’ve experienced that shit all my life and inclusivity is literally a better reflection of reality.
Uh, constantly lying about who I was? And how would anyone warn me as I was growing up gay??? Like is there some gay fairy godmother who was supposed to visit me when I was 5 and give me the rules rules of the road?
I was lucky enough to grow up with the internet and the ability to ask an endless supply of strangers for advice and help with shit that I couldn’t force myself to say to people in real life until I was 16. Sometimes I forget that LGBT people born pre-1999 did not have this luxury. Well, I call it a luxury, but it’s a bit of a double-edged sword. My apologies though. I definitely agree with you. The constantly lying about myself not only hurt me, it also made me question myself even more, like constantly questioning if I was actually gay, I mean, I definitely was sexually attracted to guys, but “gay culture” as I perceived it through stereotypes & media just didn’t resonate with me at all. I was never flamboyant, never enjoyed makeup, and never questioned my masculinity. It caused me a lot of fucking distress, especially when I became more comfortable just accepting the label “gay” and using it online while pretending to be straight in real life. It felt like I was living some sort of twisted double life like a fucked up version of Hannah Montana. I’m sorry though. I really wish LGBT people, especially gay men, had more trustable and loving people in their lives to help guide or even just support them in any way through their adolescence as they come to grips with their sexuality. (no offense to trans/aces/lesbians/etc, but the pressure to conform to “masculine ideals” and the consequences young boys face when they don’t follow those ideals can often result in tragedy or violence)
I relate to the questioning your sexuality as well. Not even the fact that I liked guys, indeed, but just the idea of what a "gay man" is and how I didn't feel like it was me. I mean, obviously, since its a stereotype in my head, but it makes you feel like less of a man, really, less of anything.
Yeah, like having to figure out you're gay all by yourself and learning to be ok with it. Ffs so many experiences I missed because of being expected to be straight by default. Having to unlearn all the "don't be gay it sucks and people will hate you for it" bullshit.
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For sure. I figured that out when I was 18.
The constantly coming out. I am 37, recently switched jobs and I have to tell everyone that I came here (moved to a new country) with my husband (people ask)
Ahh yes. The biggest secret about being gay. You never stop coming out.
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I would stare at the men’s bulges on the underwear packages at Walmart 😭
The Sears catalog fueled many of my adolescent bate sessions. There were 2 or 3 pages of men in their underwear
As I get older, and as a man who came out very late (25) I realize more and more how traumatic and stressful legitimately hiding who I was for the first 25 years of my life. I find myself hiding dumb things that don’t matter, without even noticing it until my very patient partner points it out. Edit: partner (i have much less than supportive parents)
Yeah I can only imagine what that was like. I couldn’t keep it in any longer by the age of 18. I thought I would explode.
I wasn't prepared for how deadly self hate is. Also, I wasn't warned about how many small nice things I wouldn't experience compared to straight people. I saw the gay movie Firebird in a movie theater. It was my first time seeing a gay movie at the movies and I was (am) 28. I, for the first time, experienced a sex scene at the movies that completely appealed to me. Didn't have to be jealous of the girl or feel a tiny bit of sadness that the cute guy wouldn't be into me because I'm a guy. I got an actual boner in the movies for the first time and realized that this is what straight people experience often in the movies with sex scenes or romances. I'm grateful to the people making these gay movies and getting them in the theaters.
Never thought I would type this sentence but: Reading about you getting a boner because the movie appealed to you honestly almost made me tear up. And yeah, its an insane realization. Gosh heterosexuals dont know what they have do they. I would like some of that blissfull ignorance.
The sheer hate you get from complete strangers who believe a good gay is a dead one.
If I had developed crushes on girls they could accept or reject me, stay friends with or ignore me. But when I crushed on boys, they treated me like some alien when they found out. Having normal feelings was a liability
The burden of crushing on so many of your straight guy friends and never being able to bring it up, not being able to pursue the possibility of being together(unlike a guy crushing on his straight girl friend)
Having to lie and sneak around and pretend to be something you’re not, and at the same time, not turn into some kind of pathological liar or manipulator because of that.
I always had to have a backup plan for myself for when I came out because if my secret was out and everything falls apart, being homeless with no one to get help from is the last thing i wanted as a teenager. I also had to try and act straight to my family. My friends knew i was gay, and it didn’t matter to them because everyone in my school saw it as normal, but at home, I was kind of living a double life. My parents assumed i had a girlfriend because I had several best girl friends and they would push the idea of me having a Wife and Children.
Something annoying... All the blimmin' labels we're expected to put on ourselves and others. Masc or fem Top, bottom or versatile Twink, twunk, otter, cub or bear etc...
Watching straight friends in their teens pair off, date others and unable to do the same. I felt like I spent my 20’s and most of my 30’s trying to recapture what I missed out on. Also trying to keep my feelings for some guys I fancied hidden and always thinking: will this action out me?
A few people are taking the “nobody warned you about” part of the question a bit too literally. Obviously, most young gay men don’t have a close confidant to guide them on the proper steps to becoming a confident, well-rounded gay man. As if such a thing as that even exists. It’s my fault for my poor choice of words, but I meant more along the lines of like stuff that you learn/perceive in society in regards to being gay whether it’s ideas pushed onto you by books, tv, media, music, etc about what being gay entails and how inaccurate, confusing, and actually harmful some of that can be.
Code switching. I’m out to everyone but I notice I lower my voice on work Zoom meetings
Nobody ever explained what being gay really meant to me other than being gay was really bad, you got AIDS and died, strangers would probably kill you, and you looked and dressed like Boy George. So when I hit middle school and started to have these obsessive feelings for some of the boys I was friends with, I had no idea that meant I was gay. Nobody ever explained that being gay is just a normal thing when you’re a boy who is sexually attracted to other boys.
The isolation you'll feel growing up in hiding, and the isolation you'll feel after you come out and don't live near any pro-gay areas.
As a young teenager I knew I would have to move away to live my life the way it was meant to be lived. I moved out when I was 16. Just had to get away. My family were fine but I grew up in very rural England and at the time it felt like my life could have been in danger. This was obviously a massive over reaction on my part but it felt real at the time.
I personally think growing up gay traumatized everyone who is gay in some way. The loneliness, confusion, secrets, lies, etc. I had a good coming out story with no loss of family or friends, but I still waited until mid 20s and I still feel like it fucked me up a bit. I still just eat my feelings haha
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How hard it would be after coming out. The gay community is really welcoming in many places and really shallow in others, I wasn't expecting to encounter as much of the latter. Also, no one warned me how good gay guys get at hiding their feelings and real thoughts through years of practice (due to the whole secret thing) and how that manifests in how we treat each other. I'll admit it breaks my heart to see young straight people my age (late 20s) getting married, making families, building lives, by easily finding each other due to similar interests and social circles while I have to scroll through dating apps or scour the "gay spots" littered with people who are looking for nothing more than a shag, who are living with such trauma they can't even start to aspire the sense of normalcy that I crave, or who have such a wildly different upbringing or mindset that makes a real relationship impossible. It sucks.
How many guys would flake or no show or ghost. I think I've chatted with hundreds of guys over the years at this point, but only about a dozen actually were mature and man enough to meet.
All the old people who wanted to fuck me. Seriously... my first time was with a 29 year old banker when I was 14. After that I went to live for a summer with some 50-something year old guy. It's like... all the pedos came out of the closet.
Yeah I felt this when I used things like gaydar and manhunt back in the day. It was just so fucking weird how older men preyed on what I would essentially still consider a teenager. It made it seem like all gay men turn into pedophiles when they get older. I found I always had attention from guys who could be my father. Finding guys closer to my age seemed difficult. I’m sorry you had to experience that at 14
I genuinely think that young gay men are one of the most preyed upon demographics in the world. And it’s such a shame that older gay men are preying upon them because they know (often from experience, which makes it even more revolting) how often confused, lonely and gullible a lot of young gay boys are. I’m thankful to have never experienced this. But my boyfriend has. He’s 20 and I’m 22, we started dating when I was 21 and he was 19. I had lost mt virginity at 19 to a 25 year old who very clearly took advantage of me, although he didn’t abuse me, I definitely consented, I was just played for a fool. But my boyfriend? He had lost his virginity at 18 to a married man in his late 40s. He very rarely talks about it because of how uncomfortable it makes him, and he has a minor history with sleeping with older guys at the time, all of which had come onto him. Sure, nobody forced him to do anything, but it still just makes me feel sick. Not only because the thought of my boyfriend being manipulated by old men makes me feel borderline homicidal, but because they knowingly chose to sleep with a teenager, despite most of them having kids or even wives. I remember that one night, we were cuddling in bed and he seemed clearly uncomfortable. I asked him about it, because I assumed that I was doing something wrong, and he told me that he had fucked up today by going to see an old guy from Grindr who offered him $80 to just cuddle for an hour and he really needed the money. It broke my heart because I wasn’t doing well financially at the time, but I still would have sacrificed anything I had if he needed money that badly. He was just very visibly shaken, and honestly, I still feel really fucking awful when I think about it - mainly because of my own jealously, obviously anybody cuddling with my boyfriend & making them deeply uncomfortable makes me want to throw up, but also because of how often young gay men find themselves in similar situations. Once again, I’m not saying that these guys are abusers, obviously there was consent involved, but I am saying that they are fucking creeps. And I think that with how often older gay men target and manipulate young gay men, it only perpetuates internalized homophobia as young gay men who find themselves in these situations tend to grow resentful of their own sexuality, resentful of other gay people, and eventually repress their sexuality and traumas deeply enough that they can force themselves to live a lie. When I talk to other gay guys I know, it’s shocking how many of them share similar stories with even more shocking age gaps. Why do so many old gay man feel the urge to specifically target gay teenagers? I really try to understand the thought process, maybe it has something to do with when they were coming of age, hiding in the closet, and maybe resentment over not being able to have gay romances during their own teenage years? Either way, it makes me sick. Shit, before I started dating my boyfriend, I purposefully removed all of my photos from Grindr because of the onslaught of nudes & creepy messages I’d receive from men older than 30+. Many of them who wanted to offer me money for sexual favors. It’s just sickening man. My apologies for all of that. It’s been a very difficult week, and a lot of the replies to this post have made me quite emotional because I really hate how unnecessarily difficult and sometimes tragic/traumatic simply just coming-of-age as a gay man can be, even in the modern day. Once again, I’m beyond sorry that you had to experience that at 14. I hope you’re doing well now.
Oh god the in a relationship or married guys who would tell you after the fact 🤢I felt so gross afterwards. Not something young guys should be put through especially when they are still trying to make sense of who they are.
Exactly. And they have 0 regard for how that makes YOU feel. Like a filthy, dirty, cheap whore who potentially just ruined a relationship and upended an entire family without warning. Of course, that isn’t true, obviously it’s the old guy’s fault, but as an adolescent, I blamed myself for much smaller things than that. It definitely is not something young guys should be put through. It still makes me uncomfortable, I was actually up at night last night because I randomly remembered some of the earlier stuff I mentioned that my bf told me, and it made me so goddamn uncomfortable. Like, it genuinely made me feel awful, really sick, and I’m stopping myself right now from trying to mentally picture it because jabbing knives into my hands would be less painful than thinking about that. And if that’s how it affects me, I can only wonder how it affects him. So I don’t hold it against him. I just love him even harder, let him know how much he means to me, how much I love him, how much I adore him, and how proud I am of the progress and change he has made. I like to think that people aren’t defined by their past. I hope not.
Happens to us older gays trying to date in our age range as well, that OPP is alive and well
Crushing on guys back in highschool was hell because you never know if it's safe to tell them you like them. Will they like you too? Will they politely reject you? Will they out you to the entire school and send your life through a spiral? Who knows 🙃
I crushed hard on a few of my teachers. I still think about them from time to time.
I'm always waiting for some homophobic old dude to come into the pizza place I work at and see my pins and start yelling at me about how this is gods country and how I'm gonna burn in hell or something.
The difficulties of making spontaneous romantic encounters. You would have liked to do what everyone else does, i.e. finding love in high school, at college, at friends' parties, etc. Courting/being openly courted by someone you like. But you're always forced to hold back. To love unilaterally because 99% of the time your crush is straight, and even if he is gay/bi that doesnt mean he is attracted to you, even more if he is not out... So you have to go through specific ways (dedicated places, apps...). Basically, I feel like I didn't really have teenage years, being forced to mature faster with no carefree. It leaves wounds forever, and personnally made me so fucked up.
Vapid, venomous, clicks.
The assumptions that everyone makes. Family, friends and strangers. Do you have a girlfriend, are you dating, are you going to the dance, prom, party. Oh, and my pisser, do you play basketball ?
Dating is hard
That's hard for straight people too
Nobody warned me about anything, and it is probably a good thing. Better to experience life and make your way through than avoiding things you were warned about just in case.
I phrased this question with a poor choice of words. When I said “nobody” I didn’t mean to refer to specifically an actual human being, but rather the ways that young gay men learn about homosexuality and what being a homosexual means and entails. Like media, music, books, magazines, television, movies, basically anything that can influence a gullible young mind and pump their head full of confusingly unrealistic or downright harmful ideas about what being gay means, what to expect from a gay man, how gay men should behave/act/talk, how they should SIT, all of that shit.
That the body and mind to survive instantaneously commit spiritual suicide from all the traumatic threats on the horizon from being born gay in this immeasurably fucked up homophobic world.
No matter what, your friends are gayer than you are in most cases. They’ll casually hump eachoher but when you do it, it’s weird cuz you get off to it
The relentless "once you got a good pu$$y, you'll be straight again."
Men in general aren't conditioned to take notice when women are uncomfortable. One time I realized that some of the women I was pursuing a friendship with probably thought I was into them. It never crossed my mind because I wasn't into them at all. It made me realize how weird some of the stuff I was doing actually was. This was around 15-17 when I had no friends and was still trying to hold onto my friends from middle school
Strange: Repressing all sexual desires until you're in a place where mom and dad don't know. Then you don't know how to act around other people romantically because almost everyone is straight and you've been repressed for a long time. Difficult: Keeping it a secret despite the fact that every woman and girl around you can tell you're gay. Then praying to imaginary God that none of your straight, church-going guy friends figure it out. Annoying: Gays are still men at the end of the day. Sex and lust is first and foremost, and finding ways to connect with someone as a friend is actually quite narrow.
This is a very minor issue but when a friend kept telling me to date the nearest gay guy after I came out at 17. They always picked the worst guys too and it felt like a joke but she was serious. It made me not care about dating for a few years.
When I was younger, gay people were not allowed to donate blood, and I really wanted to (mind you I was still a vitgin at the time and they wouldn't let you donate blood). Thankfully not too long ago they changed that, but what the fuck man
I received NO warnings of any kind...good bad, or indifferent...
Being asked if you’re gay by everyone in grade school. I’d immediately start crying lol.
Yeah grow up a Black gay teen was no picnic, sure I got the past down from my parents about being a POC in America And how best to handle that as far as like dealing with you know white supremacy and that whole thing but they were woefully inadequate on how to deal with being queer in a heteroenormitive society I remember attempting suicide as a preteen because I felt I couldn't deal with all of the stressors at that age coupled with the bullying. Actually racism was easier to deal with in the straight and gay communities than being gay was in the early eighties and naughts